


Robin

by audreyslove



Series: Family [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:04:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13546962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyslove/pseuds/audreyslove
Summary: Eliza and Robin have a nice talk before she starts first grade.





	Robin

When Robin discovered he was to have a little girl, he was more than a little nervous.

  
He had lived in a forest with a camp full of men, very few women inbetween. Spare for Marian, he hadn't much interaction with women, and nearly none with little girls. He knew that Marian would have been able to raise a girl, that Marian could teach him how to raise one, and that brought him some comfort. Still, he had been relieved when she gave birth to a baby boy. He was confident he would be a good father to a boy.

  
When he became the father to a beautiful baby girl, Marian wasn't there to show him what to do.

  
There were other fears that grew more pressing than her gender, however. He had worried so much about what his daughter would look like, if she would remind him of her, if he would subconsciously hold what she did against his precious daughter. Those thoughts, thankfully, had gone out the window the first time he looked at Eliza.

  
He is lucky he had Regina. At first he had been determined not to accept her help, despite her commitment to him, despite her assurances that she wanted to help. He had felt deeply guilty for burdening her with Eliza, at first, and no matter how many times Regina insisted Eliza wasn't a burden, he still felt the deep, gnawing guilt every time he caught a flicker of what looked like sadness in Regina's eyes.He saw the hurt in Regina’s eyes most often when Zelena mentioned her times with Robin – something she'd spit out in those early months with Eliza in anger and defiance for their arrangement. Zelena would either do that, or remind everyone as her status as the birth mother and Regina's inability to ever hold the same title, and he'd watch that flicker of pain pass through Regina's eyes, always immediately replaced with concern for Robin, biting down her own feelings to help him with his. She always had insisted he came first, for he had been the most hurt in this situation. So Regina had done so much for him, for Roland, in the wake of the nightmare Zelena had left them with, that Robin was determined not to ask her to do more. He had been determined to figure out how to raise his daughter on his own.

  
He failed, of course, he needed her so, so much. It pained him, how little he knew about raising children in this world. Regina had been there from the start to show him everything, support him in every aspect of raising Eliza. And fuck, he hated himself for needing her support, hated himself, was consumed with guilt, worried she’d grow tired of having to do everything in the relationship and just leave him.

  
But all that guilt and worry dissipated the day Regina l said that she truly loves Eliza. Robin knows her, knows her heart, so when Regina had told Roland that yes, yes, she loves his sister, that she loved her despite the sleepless nights, despite the ear-piercing cries, despite the fact the child was not hers… he finally felt peace in th world. From that moment on, in his mind, Eliza was Regina's. She had never belonged to anyone else. When he sees Regina and Eliza now, he sees a happy mother caring for her daughter, nothing else.  
Early on in Eliza's life she did not take interest in traditionally female things. His daughter had enjoyed playing with Henry's old trucks and cars but had little interest in dolls. She liked the outdoors, liked the mud and the dirt of the forest. Robin had prepared himself to learn about tea parties and frilly dresses, but instead Eliza's interests and demeanor mimicked Roland's.

Regina had not been surprised. Regina had just nodded when he first mentioned the trend, and said she was a Mills girl, after all, and Mills girls were not conformists.  
Regina is proud of her daughter, delighted in the fact that when she pretended to play princess, it was a princess who fought to defend her people from evil. Eliza is a little spitfire, always has been, and it’s completely unsurprising given her mother is a former Evil Queen and her father a world renowned thief.  
Eliza starts first grade next Monday, and Robin couldn't believe how time has flown by. They are spending the day together, camping, fishing (though Eliza has little patience for fishing, it seemed) and learning a bit of archery (though Regina insists she was far too young, he knows she can handle it).

Eliza asks questions. She points to every plant she comes across and asks her papa "What's that?" and then, if he knows the name of the plant, she'd ask "What can you do with it?"  
She wants to learn what she can eat, what she can used to heal, what can be used to build a fire or break camp. Truly she wants to know everything.  
In no time at all, she'd be more knowledgeable in the forest than his own merry men, Robin believes.

He is just adjusting her stance while she held her bow when she asks a question he hadn't expected to answer today.

"Papa, why don't you like my mother?"

He scrunches up his eyes, his heart racing, unable to breath. Oh gods, not this question.

"Zelena?" He asks, but he is being stupid. Of course she meant Zelena. Regina is ‘mommy’, and Eliza is much too smart than to let him get out of this by assuring her he loved Regina.

Eliza nods casually, apparently unaware what a difficult question she has just asked.

"Who told you I didn't like her?" He asks, curious and holding his breath. Zelena has made great strides in the past few years, and mostly at Regina’s insistence, they had agreed to let her into Eliza's life. When they introduced Eliza to Zelena two years ago, they anticipated all sorts of questions. Instead, when they told her that this was her mom as well, and that this mom had grown Eliza in her belly, Eliza had only asked, "Like Emma with Henry and Roland with mommy?"

She is still too little to understand the controversy. Her brothers had two mothers, why shouldn't she?

It figures that the second she had a hard question about the relationship Regina wouldn't be around. Regina. She would know how to answer this.

"No one said so — I just know it. Whenever she comes to pick me up you always leave," Eliza explains, still focusing on a target, and taking aim. She released the arrow with a pop, and it lands in the dirt. Not enough strength or focus in that one, Robin thinks. "And I wanted her to come take me to my first day of school, but she asked if you would be there and I said yes, and then she said she couldn't go."

Robin grits his teeth. He has never truly forgiven Zelena, but he had to admit she tries. She is full of the same self-loathing Regina had been, and he wishes, deep down, he could forget the pain she had caused and learn to trust or at least tolerate her. Zelena did go to great efforts to make sure Robin is as comfortable as possible now that she is in Eliza's life. She’s quite different now than she was six years ago.

Still, Zelena reminds him of a very dark time in his life, a time when he had been filled with guilt for not being able to love and connect to the person he thought was his wife. A time when he pushed himself so hard to give her the intimacy and love she craved, only to find out it was a cruel trick. Memories of Marian are all muddled with ones of Zelena now, and it’s awful, it’s something she cannot take back, though he knows she wants to. He has never truly healed. He probably needs to see Dr. Hopper, but he has resisted such a thing for years. He had assured Regina he had worked it out himself. And he had, mostly. As long as he didn't spend any time with Zelena.  
He hasn't said anything yet – hasn't found the words to respond to his daughter, when she presses on.

"Then Dr. Whale said he hopes my hair doesn't get any more red in it, because then I'll remind you of mom, and that's 'the last thing you need'. Why don't you want me to look like mom?"

Fucking Whale.

"I'm afraid Dr. Whale doesn't know much about anything that isn't medicine," Robin says, ruffling his daughter's hair, and nodding to her as she readies her second arrow, aiming at the target. "Let's not listen to him unless it's about an illness, ok?"

Eliza releases the arrow and jumps up in celebration as the arrow lands in the edge of the target. Far from the bullseye, but good nonetheless.

"So you won't be upset if my hair gets more red?"

"No, darling."

"But you don't like my mom."

He breathed in. "Your mother hurt me very badly. It was a long time ago, before you were born."

"Did she say she's sorry?"

Oh, to be innocent, when apologies fix everything.

"Yes," Robin admits, thinking of the many times Zelena has delivered a heartfelt apology, both in written form and in person. "Many times she said she's sorry."

"Then you should forgive her!" Eliza surmises, putting down her bow and looking at Robin with determination in her eyes.

"Remember when Alex pushed you, and you fell down and broke your arm? He said sorry, but you still had a broken arm, and it still hurt. Your mother hurt me, and she is very sorry. But it still hurts me.”

"What did she do?" Eliza asks, and he had anticipated this, obviously, and at one point he had a plan for how to answer this question when it inevitably came up. But now that it has been asked, his mind is completely blank on how to approach this. Eliza is young, far too young, to understand what Zelena did to him in even the simplest of terms.

"I'm afraid that's something I should keep between me and your mother," he said after a long pause, earning a scowl from Eliza.  
Eliza sighed. "I want her to take me to school, you and both my mommies." She says this with some defiance, her eyes piercing into Robin’s, as if she was daring him to turn her down.  
It isn’t much to ask. But then again, he loves her so, his daughter can almost ask anything of him and he'd do it in a heartbeat.

"Alright" he agrees. "I'll try to be better with your mother, ok?" He knows if Regina were here she'd tell him he was already far more accommodating than he need be.She'd have some magical way to explain everything to Eliza and make her understand she was asking too much – without ruining her relationship with Zelena. He knows that, he just does. But he is standing here all alone, and his daughter just wants her family together for one day, and he wouldn't deny her that because his old wounds aren’t quite healed. Regina had forgiven Zelena, and he should try to follow in his wife's footsteps.

Eliza nods and thanks him, smiling brightly. And then she cocks her head, her eyes focused on something behind him. She walks over to a bush with red berries she obviously hasn’t seen before. "What's that?" she asks, pointing towards the bush.

And with that, the very difficult conversation Robin had hoped he wouldn't have for years is over.  
When they got back home he would speak to Regina, and maybe he'd make that appointment with Dr. Hopper. He deserves to give it a chance. For his daughter's sake.

 


End file.
